James Fenimore Cooper eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 204 pages of information about James Fenimore Cooper.

James Fenimore Cooper eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 204 pages of information about James Fenimore Cooper.

     Your brother, James Cooper.

The de Lanceys were Huguenots and their loyalty to England during the Revolution made several of them British officers.  Although Cooper was ever a staunch American, this incident, with several others in his later life, seemed unfavorable to some few who were only too willing to question his loyalty.

[Illustration:  FRAUNCES TAVERN.]

[Illustration:  GOV.  JAMES DE LANCEY’S SEAL.]

[Illustration:  HEATHCOTE ARMS.]

Miss de Lancey’s great grandfather, Stephen, was the first of this aristocratic Westchester-County family on American soil.  He fled from Normandy on the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and in 1686 came to New York.  Here his son James became chief-justice and lieutenant-governor, and married Ann, eldest daughter of the Hon. Caleb Heathcote, lord of the manor of Scarsdale, Westchester, and whose manor house was Heathcote Hill, which their fourth son, John Peter de Lancey, Cooper’s father-in-law, inherited from his mother.  One of a number of services the old-world Derbyshire Heathcote-Hill family rendered to its country was giving to the Bank of England its first president.  The de Lancey name still clings to the new-world history in Fraunces Tavern, built by Stephen de Lancey in 1700, for his home.  Sixty-two years later it became the tavern of Samuel Fraunces.  In 1776 and 1783 it was the headquarters of General Washington, and in its famous Long Room “The Father of his Country” made his farewell address, and bid adieu to his generals.  Number 130 Broadway was the de Lancey home of 1730, and here was given the first inauguration ball of our nation.  On this site was built “Burn’s Coffee House,” which teemed with interesting events.  The City Hotel took its place in 1806.  John Peter de Lancey married Elizabeth, daughter of Col.  Richard Floyd, and in 1789 came to Heathcote Hill, Westchester County, which he rebuilt on the site of the old manor house, burned down.  In this home he lived out his days.  Here his son, William Heathcote, Bishop of Western New York, was born; and also his lovely daughter, Susan Augusta; here she was wooed and won by the handsome young naval officer, and on New Year’s day, 1811, became Mrs. James Cooper.  In 1899 Dr. Theodore F. Wolfe writes of Cooper and Heathcote Hill—­that some of the great trees which waved their green leafage above him lingering here with sweetheart or bride yet shade the grounds, but the household that welcomed him and gave him a beloved daughter lie in a little grass-grown cemetery near to this old home.  Mrs. Cooper had a sweet, gracious way of guiding by affection her husband, and he gave her his heart’s devotion through the forty years of their happily mated life.  Cooper and his young bride began life by playing a game of chess between the ceremony and supper.  Then, he driving two horses tandem, they made their wedding journey to Cooperstown in a gig.  His furlough ended a few months later, and to please his

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James Fenimore Cooper from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.